


On the Subject of Regret

by sunflowerspaceman



Series: Sympathy for the Devil [6]
Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Gen, Gore, Serious Injuries, Tom is mentioned - Freeform, Tord fucked up really bad, like really really bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 19:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12217113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerspaceman/pseuds/sunflowerspaceman
Summary: Or, How Tord Knew He’d Fucked Up Worse Than He Ever Had Before





	On the Subject of Regret

“So long, old friends!”

_“I’M NOT YOUR FRIEND!”_

Tord barely had time to process those words before he heard the scream of metal rending behind him. Instinctively, he moved to the side, barely missing getting impaled.

Then--

A white hot flash.

Fire.

The alarmingly familiar sensation of the air being sucked from his lungs.

_Fuck._

He was faintly aware of the cockpit crashing. He heard his ribs cracking and blood started to pool in his lungs and he couldn't feel his arm or see out of his right eye. In fact, there seemed to be sharp metal slowly crushing the right side of his body. Was he supposed to be able to see the bone in his leg like that? He laid there, limp, useless, teetering in between consciousness and sweet, blissful nothingness. Warm blood soaked through his hoodie, or what was left of it. He felt something trickling down his face--tears. He couldn't even cry properly, any attempt to make a sound resulted in coughing up blood.

He was going to die here.

And no one would care.

His mom had died years upon years ago, his dad following her not long afterwards. He'd never had any siblings, he hadn't heard from his extended family in ages, and he'd just alienated the closest friends he'd ever had.

Paul and Patryck might care a little. But likely they'd forget about him soon. He was only their boss, after all.

He was going to die a slow, painful death, alone and afraid and forgotten.

Would he even be buried?

He let darkness push in and swallow him up.

\-------

And he woke up.

His entire body ached, but it didn't hurt as badly as it did when he'd crashed.

Paul was asleep in a chair next to him. He tried to call out for him, but was stifled by the tube in his throat. The most he could make was a distressed cry.

He should be dead.

Why wasn't he dead?

Paul blinked awake, clearly groggy and confused. “Wat de neuken--” His eyes landed on Tord. “Oh, you're awake.”

He crossed the room in two long strides and stood over Tord, working to remove the tube so he could speak. “Welcome back to the land of the living, sir.”

“How did I get here?” Tord’s words slurred a little. His voice was raspy from a lack of use.

“Patryck and I pulled you out of the robot and brought you back to base.” Paul paused. “...Sir, there's something else.”

Dread washed over Tord. Of course there was something else. It couldn't just be that everything was fine. He kept his expression neutral. “What is it?”

“Well, uh, your arm was badly damaged in the crash. The medic thinks we may have to remove it. Patryck and I wanted to ask you before--”

“No.”

“...Pardon?”

It was hard to keep the fear out of his voice. “I am not having my arm amputated, Paul. It's perfectly fine.” He tried to move it to illustrate his point, and almost passed out again.

“Sir--”

“The arm stays, Paul.”

And it did. Days turned into weeks. Tord refused to remove the arm until finally, he couldn't even stand without the pain making him black out.

“Sir, please. It needs to be removed.”

When Patryck removed the bandages to change them, Tord almost cried. It could barely be called an arm festering and rotting hunk of meat. Bone could be seen in some places. The blood that came out of the wounds wasn't red anymore, it was black and rotting. It looked like a limb one would find attached to a zombie.

“Fine.” He whispered.

He found himself on a rusted metal table, held down by Patryck and Paul, a scrap of his hoodie in between his teeth so he wouldn't bite off his own tongue.

A tourniquet was put in place so he wouldn't bleed out, although at this point he felt death may be preferable.

They didn't have anesthesia, and it had never really worked on him anyway. So Tord had Paul pour as much alcohol as he could swallow down his throat _(and he had Patryck sing to him, quietly, like his mother had when he was young and small and the scariest thing he had to face was a monster in the closet)._

All that preparation, and he still wasn't prepared for the first cut.

Or the next one.

His screams of pain became weak, vulnerable sobs by the time it was over. He was covered in sweat and blood. The weight of his replacement threw him off when he tried to stand. He lurched to the side. The prosthetic clanged against the floor and somewhere, in the back of his mind, he processed that Paul and Patryck were rushing to his side and crying out his name _(but no, Red Leader wasn’t his name, was it, it wasn’t what Tom had spat out like poison, what his mother had murmured to him, what Edd had screamed when Tord destroyed everything—)_. Bile rose up in his throat and the contents of his stomach splattered all over the floor and the front of his shirt and choked him as he sobbed, scared and hurting and weak and feeling so desperately and wholly _alone_.

In the incoherent mess that was clawing itself out of his throat and past his lips he thought he heard himself cry for his friends.

Someone picked him up, and started walking with him, and someone else petted his hair and murmured something under their breath, and then he was being laid in bed and told he needed to “Rest, sir, please.”

He grabbed Paul’s arm.

“Find them.”

“Sir—”

“I—I need to—to ap—to apologize. I have to—to explain. I owe them. Find them.” His voice was raspy and weak and pained.

“...We’ll do our best, sir.”

Tord nodded, and with that, he allowed sleep to take him.


End file.
